So I haven’t made this month’s “Gigathread” or “Megathread”, and I realized that perhaps some rebranding is in order. The Gigathread and Megathread topics were for grossly off-topic discussion and community building. I’m not sure if people “get” it here in Lemmy. But there’s a wide variety of off-topic conversations that can be helpful to this community.
Maybe it’d be helpful if I posted some examples. The general rule is that “a little bit off-topic” can certainly make a new post. But extremely off-topic posts should be isolated here to just chat with everyone else.
A minor rule change: I’ll be recycling the “Chatting” topic more slowly here on out. Its going to be a soft-rule: when discussion seems dead (ie: when there hasn’t been a post in several days) AND at least a month has past, I’ll update the “Chatting” topic to help keep things fresh. Its important to have an outlet like this topic to have this community feel more like a community. Off topic, tangential, and other such topics are very welcome here. Having a dedicated spot for more casual interactions is important for any community.
Example of an offtopic discussion: The role of CPI / Fed rates. Anyway, the CPI turned out to be 0% MoM for October, a very good result suggesting the end of inflation. And so the stock market went up in general.
Not that I have a real crystal ball or anything, but there’s a lot to unpack here. 0% MoM is certainly lower than I was expecting, and dangerously low. One month isn’t so bad I guess, but multiple months of low-growth and/or even negative-growth is considered a recessionary sign. I think its important to be thinking of the general macroenconomic trends at the moment, Fed-rate policies and CPI and PCE are all important indicators to think about.